Mount Dora’s acting city manager may have a new title at the next regular city council meeting, scheduled for April 16.
Vince Sandersfeld, the city’s planning director, was pressed into action as acting city manager when then-city manager Patrick Comiskey was suspended in February.
At a special workshop held April 4 to determine the time parameters and qualifications for the new city manager, the city council apparently felt they might already have their man in Sandersfeld.
The council discussed past city manager hires. The last few city managers were hired by a headhunting firm. Most on the council didn’t think highly of hiring a firm to find their next city manager.
“I was not satisfied,” said Vice Mayor Marc Crail. “I felt personally, the first time around more energy and maybe more effort. The second time around I didn’t feel like the search firm was maybe as engaged doing that legwork and paper screening. I was pretty dissatisfied.”
Councilman Cal Rolfson said in one application, there were more than 70 applications. The firm didn’t make recommendations; the council did that. And he didn’t like the background investigation.
“That’s crucial,” he said. “I think it was rather casual.”
Both Crail and Mayor Crissy Stile said they would not want to go with a recruitment firm.
Stile said she’d been contacted by several firms already.
“There is quite the interest in being the city manager of the city of Mount Dora, as it turns out,” Stile said. “I don’t think we are going to have a hard time getting applications.”
For about an hour, the council discussed different considerations, such as experience, education and working in a municipality. They considered hiring Florida applicants, and whether the person works with tourism.
They also discussed when to post the position, not wanting to post it too soon.
Stile reminded the council that in November, four council seats are up for election. Conceivably there could be four council members who had no part in the process regarding a new city manager.
Councilman Doug Bryant was the first member on the council to talk about hiring someone internally.
“Vince has expressed interest in city manager,” Bryant said. “Now the question is, are we interested in moving forward from hiring internally. And if we are, I think we need to have some discussion about that.
“If we are comfortable, based upon what we know and believe should be in a city manager, with the acting city manager, it’s my hope that we move ahead and expedite the process, rather than simply dragging it out. It doesn’t make any sense to me that we would advertise and go through the whole process if we say, well, we pretty much know what we’re going to do anyway.”
Some members said they wanted to see what was out there, as far as city managers go. But in the end, the city council would like to vote on whether to get their city manager internally.
At the April 16 meeting, the council will vote whether they would like Sandersfeld to be the new city manager.
